Seeing Spots

OH MAN, the weekend is taking forever to get here!
This is the first full week of school and I have to admit that I am beat. Our new class is great, but they are still learning all the routines and procedures. They are really doing well with the Whole Brain Teaching techniques. I love when they do the rules and "Teach. Ok." Its so cute!

We managed to put our HUGEEEEEEEEE bulletin board together. I've posted it below, take a look.

The dots will be reused next month as a "holder" for their writing samples. Let me know what you think!!!

Classroom Tour

Well after being at school for 3 weeks and already having to change rooms once we are finally getting ready to begin school tomorrow!

Initially, I had to share a classroom with another class due to construction difficulties. Thankfully, that was all resolved last week and now we have our own room again. However that left us only a few days to do our classroom. I'm really happy with how it turned out, but I know that I'll be adding A LOT as the year progresses. There are a couple of blank spaces that I need to fill with student work as well as new creations like anchor charts etc. But until then, here's a glimpse at what lies inside the walls of our classroom. ENJOY!

View of the room from the doorway. Here you see my newly designed table (awaiting a framed quote...this week, fingers crossed!) and "today's password sign.  Throughout the room, I've made items in my green and white polka dot pattern. If anyone is interested let me know. I am planning on adding them to my TPT store. 

Our cubbies are divided in half. Here is the first half. The area above the cabinets is awaiting materials/storage for Breakfast Baskets when not in use. I found the alphabet on TPT the other day and I love it! It's all math vocab!!! I just want to label it with a sign on the blank cabinet towards the left. You also see our SuperKids poster. So excited for this curriculum. We added a rug and some pillows This will give our students a nice nook when they read for the American Reading 100 Book Challenge. 

This is the second half of the cubbies and the rest of the alphabet. You also see our caddies up top and other bins. I like to store them here when not in use because they are just pretty and look better than storage boxes up there. 

This is a shot of the room from around the doorway. You can see our layout with the tables. 

Guided reading area/small group area. Materials are behind in bins for small group work. The cubbies will be great for our belongings, especially winter coats!

Our objectives will be posted here as well as our daily class goal. I'm sorry I forgot where is got this amazing poster, but I am beyond excited to use it! If I got it from you...THANK YOU!

View of the library/morning meeting area. Love the crate seating (bottom of the picture). We found two that were left from another teacher. We used them to define the space. 

Students data binders, "Boo Boo Lotion" bin and "Spotlight on writing" waiting for a great piece to illuminate!

Sample breakfast basket waiting for the students to arrive!

View of the classroom library which includes American Reading Company books, SuperKids Library, AND personal books for free reading...sorry its blurry. I really like the ledge it makes to display books on top. This will change with each month. 

The desk area. Includes American Reading Log, Reading stamina sheet (again...if I  got this from you...THANKS!), and teacher toolbox. The curtain hides wires that are hanging off desk as well as our listening center. It's great camouflage. The material is green with white polka dots...it looks olive green here though for some reason :/

Behavior clip chart, classroom rules, and "Sample Student." Below is a dry erase board. The cards will be where we display Spelling and vocab words each week. I'd like t add more to this wall, but it's tough to get things to stick to this cinder block. 

Part of the calendar. In the next few weeks, I'm going to spruce this up and make it polka dot, but with the moving I haven't had time. Still great because it exposes the kids to a lot of concepts early on that they normally wouldn't learn to mid year. 

In the "spotlight" (classroom helper of the day) and sillybration for the day. Above is the birthday area. Again, I made these cards myself. If you'd like them to go on TPT just let me know!

Overview of the calendar area.

exit question by the door

bathroom/hall passes. 

That's it. I hope you found this helpful and can use some of these ideas in your room. Any thoughts? I'd love to here them!!

Bin Makeover Reveal!!!

School starts Monday and I have been working my tail off trying to get our classroom ready to go. I have most of my bins completed after their spray paint makeover and I'm really excited about them. I've already gotten a ton of compliments!

In case you have forgotten what they looked like here is the link to the before post:   Bins Before

Here they are already ready to be loaded up in the classroom:

caddies with polka dot ribbon

miscellaneous bins for manipulatives

book, magazine, etc bins

bins in classroom library (still need to add labels for genres, etc)

What do you think? I really love them!!!

Besides my bins, I created a new behavior clip chart for my class. The sign at the top says "Is your behavior spot on today?"

If you like this chart, you can get it from my TPT store HERE!!!

It includes behavior logs for the entire year, so make sure you check it out!

New Table and Easy Polka Dot Craft

A few weeks ago, I posted about a surprise project I was working on.  To check it out click HERE.

Well, now it's time for the big reveal...I transformed an accent table!

First, I sanded and spray painted a table. This table was a spare accent table that had been in my grandma's house and some how landed in our garage.

After allowing the paint to dry, I then took a plastic laundry basket and cut the bottom off. You can use any basket you have. I found mine at the Dollar Tree. Using the bottom as a palette, I poured some paint in different sections. This was a really easy and relatively clean method.  I used small sponge brushes, one for each color. Again, I got these at Dollar Tree..they were 8 for $1!!!

With the top half of the laundry basket, I cut it until I had small squares of circles. I know that sounds a bit strange...I think the picture will help you get the idea. I had one square per color.

Then, using my dots and paint, I randomly sponge painted the circles onto the table. If you do this yourself, I recommend sticking to the one square of dots per color. Also, make sure you wipe the squares after every few dips in the paint...otherwise it gets smudgy on the table.




Finally, spray the entire table with a sealer. This will give it a nice glossy shine and will prevent from chipping. This table is slated for outside my door as a way to welcome the students, families, and guests into our room. I'll point it out when I post my classroom tour in a few days.

Now, onto a super easy craft that you can do with the extra paint you have lying around.
Since I changed my theme this year to polka dots, I had to change pretty much everything I had in my room. This even included my picture frame that was on my desk. Last year it had bumble bees.

I started out by taking some paints that match my color scheme and a stylus (I actually use the bottom of it. You can use any stick that has a rounded bottom). You can see what I used on the bottom right of the photo.

 Next, I took my frame and made small quick dots in a random pattern. I did one color at a time and was certain to wipe off the end of the stick between each color.

 Here's my final product! Now, I just need to find a good picture to pop in because obviously that's not me or my bf...hehehe.

I hope you enjoyed these two projects. I'll have my Bin Makeover coming in the next day or two so stick around for that as well.  Hope everyone has a great week!

Classroom bins

After teaching for 9 years, I have quite the collection of bins in all shapes, sizes, and unfortunately colors. It kinda gets annoying when I look at all the colors and gets on my nerves. This year my coteacher and I are doing a new theme so I decided to conquer my bins and make them all look uniform.

I went to Joann's fabric and got some Spray paint that works on plastic and started spraying. Here's a look at te bins before and the current state as they dry. I'll post an after when I'm all done. I'm lovin them so far!

I'm back!!!!

After an amazing week lost in the Atlantic Ocean on a cruise ship, I'm back and ready to conquer another school year. I've already started a few projects that I can't wait to share with all my bloggy friends. Here is just a quick sneak peek at what I'm working on:

I'll let you try to figure out what I'm working on...there are two others things not pictured. One is a laundry basket...any guesses???!!!

Stay tuned and I'll post pics when I'm done AND step by step instructions on how you can do this super easy project your self for your class.

Have a great night!

Working hard, Captain My Captain and New Teacher Tuesday

Sorry for the lack of posts this week. Since I've been back from vacation I've been hard at work doing the curriculum mapping for our grade and trying to have a life at the same time...no small feat!
I do have 2 projects I'm just about finished with and will be posting soon so keep an eye out for those.

I do however have something I'd like to share today. In our classroom, it is so hard to keep up with jobs everyday since we have a million things going on in the school. So a few years ago I developed a system to get rid of the classroom job chart and simplify it down to 1. Yup that's right, 1!

Each day I assign one student to be the "Busy Bee" for the day. That student is responsible for all the jobs in the classroom that day. To keep track, I keep it simple as well...Alphabetical order! That's it. One at a time, no fighting, and everything gets done. Plus the kids love it because they get to do each job multiple times during the course of the year, not just one or two times. To make it even more special, I give the "Busy Bee" a special vest to wear all day.

Here's a pic of a student wearing the "Busy Bee" vest. The kids get really excited to wear it. (No, they don't always wear the hat...that's from another project!).

Finally, I'm super excited to be apart of Dana Lester from Fun in First Grade's New Teacher Tuesday. Make sure you head over to her page and give her some love!!

Fun In First Grade